34 Samantha
34
SAMANTHA
I WOULD NEVER remember Christmas Eve the same way again. It would be the day my heart had been broken, probably for as long as I lived. A lifetime of good memories and moments wiped out by one tragic event and rebranded into the day the bad thing happened.
Everything was a blur.
I called Xavier. That was the first thing I did. It felt like sending out a pointless SOS. He couldn’t get here. I was shouting into the void like the Titanic beeping Morse code into the ether as it sank, even though nobody was going to make it in time to pull survivors from the icy waters.
Dad brought Mom to my apartment to get her out of the chaos. Tristan took the boys to get donuts so they wouldn’t see when the coroner showed up. I wish I’d thought of it before he did so I wouldn’t have to see it either. They brought her out feet first, wrapped in a blue body bag.
My sister and I answered questions clutching tissues. Neither of us really cried. It was more of a dazed sniffling in between because we had to keep it together enough for the tasks we had to perform.
After her body was gone, we had to clean her room. Jeneva balled up the sheets and the mattress protector and we stuffed it into the washing machine. Then my sister and I called funeral homes. Dad contacted the rest of the family, Tristan brought back donuts and ordered food later, which was probably the only reason any of us actually ate.
Mom kept asking for Grandma.
I had the foresight to preemptively medicate her. Everyone was crying and if Dad going to the gym had set her off, Grandma dying was going to be a thousand times worse. Not that she’d understand what had happened, but she would know that one of her constants was suddenly not there and that would be enough.
I know I was doing things, but I felt like I wasn’t doing anything. It felt like more needed to be done, important time-sensitive tasks, and I couldn’t remember it all and everything was taking too long and I was moving too slow.
I fed Pooter. I fed the pug. He pooped on the carpet in my room, probably because nobody let him out. I cleaned that up. I had a headache from crying—or not crying enough and trying to hold it in.
Then somehow it was nighttime. I took two melatonin and then two Advil PMs.
I didn’t expect Xavier to come. He said he would. The last thing he told me was “I’m coming.” But I hadn’t heard from him since I’d called him this morning. My fault, not his—I’d let my phone die, the truest indication of my mental headspace.
Then at 1:08 a.m. Christmas morning I felt a dip on the side of my bed. Suddenly I was wrapped in firm familiar warm arms and for the first time in sixteen hours I was held together enough by someone to completely fall apart.
I utterly lost my shit.
Guttural sobbing into his shirt. The breakdown I should have been having all day, but I’d been too busy adulting to properly lose it.
“Shhhhhhh, it’s okay.” Xavier smoothed my hair.
I couldn’t see him. It was dark in the room and I was buried in his chest, but even with my eyes closed I knew him. I’d know him anywhere. I felt rescued, like help had finally arrived. I didn’t have to be strong anymore, I could be a worm and he’d be a worm expert and I could just wiggle down in the dirt and rest my brain. I wanted him to hold me so tight I couldn’t breathe.
“Shhhhhh, I’m here,” he whispered.
I couldn’t even imagine the hoops he had to go through to make this happen. The astronomical cost of the last-minute Christmas airline ticket, covering the ER shift he was already covering for someone else, finding someone to watch Jake, canceling on the guys for the cabin.
My whole body racked with sobs.
She was gone. One minute she was alive, and then she wasn’t.
I thought Mom’s dementia was cruel. It was cruel. It was a long goodbye. But no goodbye was just as bad.
When I woke up at 10:15 the next morning, Xavier wasn’t there.
I thought for a second that I had imagined him here, that I’d been delirious with grief and it never happened. But then I saw his duffel bag by the bed and it made me burst back into tears.
I took a shower and put on clean clothes, brushed my hair because I didn’t want to be the girl with the rat’s nest in front of him. He was pretty much the only reason I was functioning at all.
When I pulled on his hoodie to leave for the house, I saw he’d fed Pooter, changed her water, and cleaned her litter box. The pug was also gone.
I found my dog and my boyfriend in the kitchen serving breakfast to the boys, who were sitting at the counter, feet dangling off barstools.
Xavier had made a whole pan of ham and cheese scrambled eggs. There was a massive stack of buttered toast on the island cut into triangles and a full pot of fresh coffee.
“Hey,” he said, setting down the frying pan when he saw me. “I didn’t want to wake you up.” He came over and hugged me.
When he let me go, I looked around blearily. “Where is everyone?”
“Your dad came down for coffee. He said your mom had a bad night. Your sister is taking a shower. I haven’t seen Tristan.”
The dog peered up at me from Xavier’s feet.
He had been adopted by the boys. They named him Pugsly—very unimaginative, but I’d let it slide. He’d lived in the house for the first week he was here but every time Mom saw him, she asked whose dog it was. Twenty, thirty times a day. It got to the point where we all wanted to tear our hair out. We had to keep the dog in my apartment just to maintain our sanity.
Would she do this with Grandma too? Ask us over and over where she was? Make us tell her again and again that she’d died—or worse, make up a lie so she didn’t have to relive it every time she forgot?
I somehow knew this was exactly what would happen.
I was already braced for the emotional and mental drain of dealing with this, every day, probably until Mom couldn’t speak anymore. Cruel and unusual punishment for an already heartbreaking situation and the only relief would be when Mom was so far gone she couldn’t form the words to ask.
“I have to walk the dog,” I said absently.
“I walked him,” Xavier said. “Sit.”
I nodded and let him put me on a stool. Then he went back to the stove.
“What time are we opening presents?” Holden asked.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed, putting my face in my hands. It was Christmas. I completely forgot. I simultaneously remembered and didn’t remember the holiday.
“Let’s just finish breakfast and see what your mom wants to do,” Xavier said.
The boys nodded at him like their messiah had spoken and went back to eating their eggs.
He poured me a coffee—made the way I liked it—set it in front of me, and sat down. “Can I get you to eat?” he asked, taking my hand and covering it with his.
“I don’t think I can,” I said, my chin quivering.
“If you don’t eat, you’ll feel worse,” he said gently. “Eat a little for me, okay?”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and nodded.
Xavier assembled half an egg sandwich and set it in front of me. “It’s not a lot, but it’ll keep your energy up.”
I was staring at it, deciding whether I could stomach it, when someone started screaming. Xavier and I locked eyes.
Mom.
I flew off the stool and ran through the house.
Mom was in the living room, clawing at Dad. “Let me go! I have to get groceries!”
Dad was trying to keep her from the front door. “Lisa, we have groceries—”
“NO! I’m going to the store! Let me go, we need food!”
“What happened?!” I shouted.
Dad was holding her wrists. “Lisa! Stop!”
She didn’t. She started melting down, thrashing and swinging. It was that day in the kitchen all over again.
Dad folded around her, pinning her arms as she struggled against him, screaming.
Tristan came up behind Xavier and Jeneva ran from upstairs.
“Did you give her the sedative?” I yelled.
“I gave her everything,” Dad said, while she shrieked. “She was up all night talking about Vons. I don’t know what’s wrong with her!”
“Is she hungry?” Xavier asked.
We all paused. Even Mom took a moment to pant.
“If she’s talking about groceries, she might want food,” Xavier said.
I looked at Dad. Dad looked at Jeneva.
Tristan crossed his arms. “Did you feed her last night?”
I watched the color drain from Dad’s face. “I thought you were doing it.”
“Why would I do it?” Tristan snapped.
“Because you brought dinner!”
Jeneva’s face fell. “How could you not feed her?”
“I was dealing with calling the family and the morgue—”
“And I was dealing with my kids ! She’s starving!” My sister’s voice cracked. “Tristan ordered food!”
“She wasn’t asking for dinner?” I asked.
Dad looked stricken. “She was… but she does that. She asks even after we’ve eaten…”
Mom was crying now. She’d stopped struggling though, like she knew we understood why she was upset. Maybe she did.
“Okay,” Xavier said calmly. “It’s been a rough twenty-four hours. Let’s get her something to eat. Let’s get everyone something to eat. Come on. Let’s go. Breakfast is on the stove.”
He said it in his firm, steady authoritative way and it worked. Everyone gave up the argument and turned like weary travelers for the kitchen, Tristan taking Mom like Dad didn’t have the right to touch her.
I stayed back until Xavier and I were the last ones. I stood there, hugging my arms around myself.
“How did you know?” I asked, sniffing. “About the hungry thing.”
“My patients are nonverbal. I’m used to figuring out what’s wrong and a lot of times it’s less complicated than you think. I usually start at food and work backwards.”
I huffed a mirthless laugh.
I stood there staring at the Christmas tree in the corner of the living room. All the heirloom family ornaments that Grandma always packed up on January 1, hanging on the tree where she put them. There were piles of presents sitting there. Some were for her. She’d made tamales. It would be the last time we’d eat them.
“We didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye,” I said, quietly. “She was here and then she wasn’t. And now I’m never going to see her again.”
He was looking at me gently.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He put his hands on my arms. “Sorry for what?” he asked.
“Everything? That the cabin trip is canceled, that my family is a hot mess, that you probably had to sell a kidney to get here.”
“I don’t want you thinking about that right now.”
“I should have fed her. I should have taken care of her too.”
“It’s a stressful time. You’re all going to miss things, everyone is. You need to give yourself grace.” He tipped my head up with a hand on my chin. “Do you need anything? What can I do for you?”
His eyes were red. He looked more tired than the last time I saw him, if that were even possible. He’d lost weight too. Maybe muscle? I know he doesn’t have a lot of time to go to the gym these days. But he was here. He was making breakfast for everyone and asking me if I was okay. And the fact that he was here did make me a little okay.
“My head hurts,” I said, rubbing my temple.
“Do you want some Advil?” he asked.
“No. I took some in the middle of the night, I don’t think it’s been long enoug—” I froze. “No…” I breathed.
“What?”
A foggy, grief-riddled recollection had just drifted to the surface of my brain. A melatonin-soaked flashback.
I looked up at him in horror.
“Oh God, no. No, no, NO!”
Then I bolted out the front door and ran down the driveway back to my apartment.
Please. Please let it still be there. Please let this be some horrible fever dream that didn’t actually happen. I burst into my studio and ran for my bed.
On the nightstand next to the lava lamp was a single Advil PM and a single, lone earbud.
“Nooooooo!”
“What happened?” Xavier said from behind me.
I turned slowly. “I swallowed my earbud.”
He blinked at me. “You what ?”
“It was dark and I was drugged up on sleep aids and my head hurt so much and I thought it felt a little weird going down but—XAVIER! Stop laughing!”
He was cracking up. My usually very reserved, very contained boyfriend was laughing.
“This isn’t funny!” I said, starting to laugh a little too.
“It is the tiniest bit funny,” he said.
“Am I going to need surgery?” I looked at him, despondent.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“How’s it going to come out?”
“The way that most things come out.”
I groaned pathetically and he gathered me into a hug.
“God, this day is a fucking nightmare,” I muttered.
“And now you can’t even watch cat videos in surround sound.”
I snorted and he squeezed me tighter.
“You will be fine,” he said, chuckling.
“You promise?”
“I do.”
And with him here I did sort of believe him.